


First Steps

by Pteropoda (SilentP)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Engineer Wheeljack, M/M, Other, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 22:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6677320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentP/pseuds/Pteropoda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ratchet doesn't care if Ultra Magnus and Wheeljack dance around each other, but he'd prefer it if they wouldn't use him as a go-between in their attempts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Steps

**Author's Note:**

> I initially wrote this as part of a series of prompt requests sometime last summer, and posted it to my tumblr. It's been edited since, so I thought I should share the finished version here. 
> 
> Alternate summary: Wheeljack was the first one to extend his hand, so to speak.

“Hey, doc—“

“Wheeljack, for the thousandth time, do _not_ call me that!”

Wheeljack shrugged, unconcerned by Ratchet’s outburst as he finished his ambling approach and leaned against the console. “All right then, sunshine.”

Ratchet growled in irritation as he turned away from his screen. “And what is it that you want, Wheeljack? It must not be important, if you’re so willing to irritate me in the process of asking.”

“I need to borrow your tools,” Wheeljack said.

Ratchet puffed up with indignation, his armor flaring as his shoulders and eyebrows rose toward the ceiling. “No! Absolutely not! Out of the question!” he shouted. “Those are delicate instruments, and they have no replacements anywhere in this solar system, at that! I won’t have you so much as putting your hands on them.”

“Not even if I’m careful?” Wheeljack asked, quirking a brow ridge.

“Not even then,” Ratchet said firmly. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I cannot begin to replace those tools, and I will not have them being used by a mech who considers blowing things up to be the solution to all of his problems!”

Wheeljack didn’t leave, not even when Ratchet turned back to his console, grumbling.

“Ratchet.”

The sound of his name, spoken in such a serious tone by Wheeljack of all mechs had Ratchet looking up again in surprise. Wheeljack was staring at him, his expression unusually solemn above the blast mask.

“I’m not gonna wreck them, I need them for a project. And before you say it, no, it’s not a bomb.”

“Then what is it?” Ratchet asked, curious in spite of himself.

Wheeljack’s optics widened, then slid away from Ratchet’s. “Well, ah,” he said, clearing his throat. “It’s nothing big…”

“Wheeljack, I won’t give you my tools unless I know what it is you’re making with them,” Ratchet said sternly, privately reveling in the chance to make Wheeljack squirm for once.

“Fine,” Wheeljack grumbled. “I want to make a hand for Magnus, all right?”

Ratchet blinked, then replayed the phrase through his head again, disbelieving. He’d never expected to hear that particular combination of words out of Wheeljack’s mouth. “A hand? Wheeljack, even if you had the expertise required to make such a complicated piece of anatomy, we don’t have the parts!”

“I know that,” Wheeljack said. “Look, doc, way back before I joined the Wreckers, I used to do some inventing, all right? I was an engineer. I couldn’t make a proper replacement, but I could at least make him something better than that pincer he’s got now, if you’d let me.”

Ratchet winced, expression tight. He kept meaning to make Ultra Magnus something better himself, but the time had never seemed to appear. It stung his pride as a medic that Wheeljack was stepping forward here, but… He pressed his lips together tightly, but after a few minutes of strained silence, he nodded, even though the tension never left his frame. “Very well,” he said slowly. “Let me know when you need them, and I will be certain that they are available for your use.”

Wheeljack relaxed and began to grin. “Thanks, doc,” he said, turning to make his way out of the warehouse.

“Wheeljack,” Ratchet called, making the former Wrecker pause. “I was under the impression that you and Ultra Magnus were… at odds.”

There was a long moment of silence as Wheeljack stood with his back to Ratchet. Finally, he shrugged. “He may have a stick in his aft, but what can I say? He’s got my back in a fight.”

\-----

Ratchet had long ago turned one of the warehouses into a workshop, to store his tools and projects on the occasions he didn’t work on them in their communal space. As soon as Ratchet handed over the tools, Wheeljack commandeered the space, and he’d spent every free moment since hidden away in it.

Ratchet had shared the story with Optimus, of course, and their commander had gotten a smile out of it. Ratchet was certain that Wheeljack had told Bulkhead, as well, since he didn’t seem worried that his friend was hiding himself away from everyone else in the back of the warehouse. Among the others, however, it was certainly noticed.

“Where is Wheeljack?” Ultra Magnus asked, the moment he pulled to a halt in the main warehouse. Clearly he’d surveyed the crowd of bots gathered in the room, and it wasn’t hard to notice that Wheeljack’s flashy white was missing amidst all the other colors.

Arcee looked around the cramped space herself before she turned back to the commander. “Probably in Warehouse C again, sir,” she said.

“Why are you looking for him, anyway?” Smokescreen asked, from his own corner of the room where he’d taken to watching the shows the human children tended to leave on. “Sir,” he added belatedly, when Ultra Magnus turned a cold look on him. “He’s been in there nonstop for like three days.”

“It is what he might be working on that concerns me,” Ultra Magnus said. “Wheeljack is known to deal a great deal of damage when left to his own devices.”

“Aww, Jackie won’t do that this time, Sir,” Bulkhead said. “Ratchet even let him do it!”

Ratchet looked up from his console and cursed silently as Ultra Magnus turned expectantly toward him. Why did Bulkhead need to drag him into this?

“Wheeljack is using a number of my tools for his project,” Ratchet said brusquely, turning back to his work. “I had to approve of the project before he began.”

“What is the project, then?” Ultra Magnus asked.

“Don’t worry, I’m certain you’ll see it soon enough,” Ratchet said. Out of the corner of his optic, he saw Ultra Magnus hesitate, the wind taken completely out of his sails.

“Very well,” he said eventually, and finally stepped back from Ratchet. Ratchet resisted the urge to roll his optics. By the Allspark, but the excuses these two came up with to avoid simply talking to one another!

\-----

Ultra Magnus spent a few days breathing down everyone’s necks before he finally stopped sulking, but it was while before Wheeljack finally approached Ratchet again.

“It’s not the prettiest,” Wheeljack said as he set the prosthetic hand down on Ratchet’s workspace with surprising care, “but it should get the job done.”

Ratchet leaned over to examine it. The prosthetic was indeed makeshift, a mismatch of human metals and Cybertronian, bare of paint or outer casings, but it was still a great deal better than the simple claw Ratchet had been able to rig before. This hand had three fingers, a thumb, and a wrist, all with articulated joints, and Ratchet could see the simple pressure sensors embedded in the fingertips and palm.

It was far more than he had been expecting, particularly from Wheeljack. “Wheeljack, this is… quite impressive,” he said, unable to conceal his pleased expression. “Unconventional, but impressive.”

Wheeljack shrugged, but his grin foiled his attempts at staying casual. “I just made what I thought would work,” he said. “So, doc, will it work?”

For once, Ratchet didn’t even mind the nickname. He picked up the hand and turned it over, examining the entire thing more closely. “The size seems right,” he observed. “With some adjustments to connect the motor control and pressure feedback to the appropriate neural lines, this should do quite well.”

“Do whatever you want to,” Wheeljack said. “You’re the expert here, Ratch.” He turned away, but hesitated. “Hey, uh… when you’re putting it on, don’t tell him it was me,” he said.

Ratchet only barely resisted the urge to slap his palm against his face. “Very well, Wheeljack,” he sighed. “I won’t tell him.”

Wheeljack nodded. “That’s all I ask, doc.”

\-----

 “Ultra Magnus,” Ratchet called, when the truckformer pulled into the warehouse. “Come join me, please.”

“Yes, Ratchet?” Ultra Magnus transformed as he followed Ratchet to the screened off area that had hastily been designated as the medbay. It was far from a proper bay, considering his utter lack of materials, but there was at least a cot, and a table for him to work on, and the area could be kept passably clean by the aluminum siding that sectioned it off from the rest of the building.

Ratchet picked up the prosthetic from his worktable and turned to show Magnus. “Here. I need to manually check the measurements for this and make adjustments. Put out your arm,” he ordered.

Ultra Magnus hesitantly put forward his right hand. “Ratchet?” he asked again.

“You’ve been due a more sophisticated replacement for a while,” Ratchet answered as he brusquely ran a scan over the length of Ultra Magnus’s forearm where the simple clawed replacement attached. “Stay still. I don’t need you ruining the reading.”

“Why were no measurements made beforehand?” Ultra Magnus asked, even as he held himself obediently stiff. Ratchet could hear the gears beginning to turn in his processor as he thought over his question. He kept silent, hoping that Ultra Magnus would at least keep the revelation to himself, so that he wouldn’t have to actually tell Magnus where the hand had come from and deal with an upset Wheeljack. Magnus, however, was blunt as ever. “This was the project Wheeljack was working on,” he said slowly.

Ratchet huffed. “Regardless, I’ve looked it over. It’s safe, and it should return a great deal of dexterity to your function once I’ve attached it,” he said, dodging the confirmation. Technically, he’d done as Wheeljack asked. It wasn’t Ratchet’s fault that the answer here was obvious.  

Magnus glanced up, but for once even he wasn’t scowling at the barest hint of Wheeljack’s involvement. “Why did he do this?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Ratchet said, turning his attention to the wiring of the prosthetic and preparing the minute adjustments that would leave it ready to install. “You would have to ask him. He certainly wasn’t eager to share his reasons with me.”

When Ratchet finally lifted his helm, he found Ultra Magnus staring at the limb that had been built for him as though he had never seen anything like it before in his life.

Whether by accident or by design, Wheeljack returned to base just as Ratchet had Ultra Magnus testing the functionality of the new hand.

Ultra Magnus glanced up at the sound of approaching engines, and went stiff as Wheeljack rolled into the warehouse. Wheeljack must have noticed Ultra Magnus’s optics on him, because he nearly fumbled his transformation sequence. He recovered quickly enough, but the mistake had been obvious to Ratchet.

“Soldier,” Ultra Magnus barked, when it looked like Wheeljack was going to disappear further into the warehouse without saying anything.

Wheeljack stopped in place, but angled his helm vaguely in Ultra Magnus’s direction. “What do you want?” he asked. The lack of a ‘sir’ at the end was a glaring omission, and Ratchet watched Magnus carefully for any flash of temper.

Ultra Magnus stretched the new hand, then clenched it, the same exercise Ratchet had been having him do for the past five minutes. The limb moved smoothly and without hesitation, no lags or catching gears whatsoever.

“This was well-made,” he said, and Ratchet blinked in surprise. A simple compliment from Ultra Magnus was rare indeed. If Ratchet was surprised, however, Wheeljack was completely shocked. He had stopped in his tracks and wheeled around to face Magnus with wide optics. It took him moments to remember himself.

“Well, you’d better take care of it, then,” he said, then walked quickly away.

Ratchet had to bite his tongue to keep from saying anything as he watched Ultra Magnus’s expression. He was watching Wheeljack’s retreat, thoughtfulness overcoming his usual stony expression. Instead, he turned his attention back to his scanner.

No doubt the two of them would be back to awkwardly dancing around each other soon enough, but at least they wouldn’t be doing it with Ratchet stuck in between.


End file.
